Landscapes While You Travel

 Landscape photographers have one key rule, be up before the sunrise or be ready to be available during sunset. These times are considered the Golden Hour when the light is the best, it’s low and directional. 

But what do you do when your traveling with family and friends on vacation. Getting up an moving around in the summer, on vacation,  at 4AM does not necessarily ingratiate you to your family. Many times as a photographer you have to make compromises. 


Sometimes when your traveling, its not about disturbing your family but its much more practical than that. It’s all about when your itinerary allows you to be at a certain place at a certain tine. My father taught me all about balance, everything in life is a compromise, and sometime landscape / travel photography can be just that, a compromise. 

The image above was in a Japanese Garden at Butchart Gardens in Victoria Canada. My wife and I visited this beautiful set of gardens while coming back to Seattle on our Alaskan Cruise. It was our one stop in Canada. I had no control of the time we’d see them, I was at the mercy of the cruise lines. 

However, that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t capture an interesting image (at least I thought so) 😉.  We were in this part of the park and I saw the water and curving of the rocks and was immediately drawn to it to try to capture it. 

I only had one problem, there were people everywhere. As usual, in my head I’m thinking “OK people, get out for a minute so I can photograph this without all you people here”.  Of course I never said that as they had every right to be there as I did, but it seems they telepathically heard me. To my surprise, about a minute later, I had about 10 seconds of no one in the shot. 

I moved like a ninja, wide angle lens on the camera body, got down as low as I could without making a total mess of what I was wearing (after all I did have to ride in a bus with others back to the ship) and shot away.  

It’s not a great shot, but its not a bad shot either considering the circumstances. 

Next week more on the challenges of travel photography! 

#travelphotography #buchartgardens #japaneesegardens. 

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